About this episode
What does alignment really mean in product teams, and why does consensus often slow everything down?In this episode of The Product Experience, Lily Smith and Randy Silver are joined by Blagoja Golubovski (VP of Product, formerly at Usercentrics) to unpack one of the most persistent myths in product leadership: that good product organisations are democracies.Chapters0:00 Product leadership is not about consensus1:21 Introduction to Blagoja2:48 From engineering to product leadership4:47 What people think product leadership is5:44 Creating clarity and explicit trade-offs6:53 Why product organisations are not democracies7:54 Input vs ownership in decision-making8:24 Who is accountable for product decisions9:50 Leadership, strategy, and prioritisation10:02 How product leadership changes as companies scale12:29 Why decision-making mechanics define product culture13:27 Separating input from decisions14:59 Committees vs accountability16:16 Why alignment does not mean agreement17:29 The three levels of product decisions21:00 Diagnosing broken decision-making22:08 Environment beats individual skill23:19 What real prioritisation looks like24:46Our HostsLily Smith enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She’s currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She’s worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank Bristol and runs ProductCa
